Goodbye Apathy

by uhbeautifuldisaster

Does your whole life consist of your relationship? Or are you too busy with work? “Each area requires 100% commitment (awareness, perseverance, & patience.) Participate as if you count. This grid reduces fear of loneliness.” I wrote that in my Progress Report journal while I read Ph.D Susan Jeffer’s self-help book “Feel the Fear…and do it anyways!”

These are the categories she suggests. You can fill them with what’s meaningful and purposeful to you. She instructs to take a few minutes and visualize what you’d like each quadrant to look like, and then ask yourself what specific steps can you take in that direction. Write it out and be descriptive. Taking accountability in setting short term goals – achievable goals – that you can complete in the next week or three days will help you complete your long term goals.

I can imagine inner peace for personal nourishment, so I can proactively participate in an activity, say yoga. Time management is key. My advice is to take on projects you can finish quicker, so you’ll have time for the bigger projects. It takes me 15 minutes in the morning to do my breathing exercises, poses, and drink two cups of water, whereas sometimes I don’t get the opportunity to privately study for 3 hours. I’d feel worse if I wasn’t doing something – but don’t be so hard on yourself.

This next exercise will help out with your Time Management skill. The Integrity Mirror was suggested by Ph.D Tal Ben Shahur in his self-help book about his positive phycology course he teaches at Harvard. In his book HAPPIER, you record the activities you participate in & the duration. For example, you spend 4 hours on facebook. Labeled: Activity, Time, Meaning & Pleasure – on a scale of 1-5, how meaningful was it for you to be on facebook for 4 hours? How good did it make you feel, did you derive satisfaction?

Then decide if you want to spend more or less time on facebook.

There are habits that can be detrimental to our health. For some reason, we abandon our strengths when we need them the most. This keeps you on track to do the things that make you happy. Remember, whether you believe you can or can’t, you’re right.
– Don’t live with the result of other people’s thinking
– Don’t do anything that you’d feel ashamed of later
– Do live in the present moment
– Do give yourself a pat on the back
There are 24 hours in a day. I divided my activities with the amount of hours, and I found I can spend 2 hours on each activity, with 8 hours of sleep included.

I have time to paint, time to read, time to love, time to work out, and time to enjoy a movie, time to volunteer, time to be with my sweetheart.

The only thing I don’t like about this is the mindset it can put you in, like you can control what happens to you. You can make a conscious effort to get the outcome you desire, but not everything works out accordingly. The future is uncertain. For example, in my life right now my biggest focus is getting a job. I do my best with what I have – I’m persistent with managers, I dress for the motto “if you want to be successful dress prosperous”, keep track of whose hiring, but I can’t control the market. I had a job for one week at a Chinese restaurant, and the manager, Shawn, told me on the last Sunday “So we not real busy, I’ll call you when we get busy.” I applied for the company my mom works for, she works from hom… and my computer bleeped up and ruined the interview, thus disqualifying me for the job.

In his memoir, The Last Lecture, Randy discusses the brick walls that stand in our way. The brick walls are there to show us how badly we want something. Don’t give up, we should never give up. “As I see it, if you work more hours than somebody else, during those hours you learn more about your craft. That can make you more efficient, more able, even happier.”